SMWCon Fall 2011 retrospect

As usual in SMWCon, there has been a feedback session at SMWCon Fall 2011 where general impressions and suggestions related to the event have been gathered. This page lists the main discussion points and initial conclusions on each of them.

SMWCon technical program

Lightning talks

maybe more sessions for this

have them early on to act as teasers; allow longer slots on the topics if desired

Encourage more talks

more, shorter talks (e.g. 30min instead of 45; have some lightning talks as full talks)

explicitly invite speakers

Tutorial day

generally positive feedback

improve preparation in some cases (e.g. do not rely on ad hoc demos where you do not know upfront what aspects to show)

avoid technical issues in tutorials

Cluster talks by topics

have sessions that roughly cluster the topics

helps people select what they care about

maybe ask for short abstracts to further clarify what a talk will be about

keep the one-track structure of SMWcon

Level of presentations

perceived to be just right according to audience poll (not too hard/not too easy)

SMWCon organisation

Organisational improvements

nominate program chair to be responsible of the program

have session chairs to help keeping the time

possibly have sponsorship or publicity chairs as well

Development activities

co-location with tutorials not ideal

maybe add a hackathon at the end (to be attended only for actual development)

Community building

initial individual introductions would be too long, not desired

but having a sentence per person in the wiki as a short introduction would be nice

Follow-up feedback survey

Should be done

Cost of participation

no strong opinions, seems to be acceptable

Preferred time for the event

during week is preferred for professionals, keep it like this

maybe have hackathon (day 4) on a Saturday

Marketing/publicity

do a press release, esp. to reach business participants

nominate a publicity chair for taking care of this

further distribute call for participations

have speakers advertise SMWCon at other conferences, maybe add some incentive for reduced registration for those who do this

consider distributing flyers, stickers etc. at other events

Location/co-location

future organisers wanted

visiting the same/a similar location twice not perceived as a disadvantage by participants

(but note that there is a bias when asking the locally present participants if they like the location)

co-location with other events not favoured by most (parallel events would make it harder to follow both events; sequential events would take a longer total time most likely including a weekend, perceived as too inconvenient by many)

most attendees favour an attractive, well-connected location over a remote one that may be cheaper/easier to get

discussion for locations of SMWCon Spring 2012: US west coast or Vancouver? To be decided.

Further improve community interaction

live remote participation? (live video/audio seems clearly out of reach)